


You’ll be Okay

by Sincerely_Sierra



Series: Alice [2]
Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Anxiety Attacks, Baby Alice, Baby Fic, Coping Mechanisms, Disordered Eating, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Mental Health Issues, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sincerely_Sierra/pseuds/Sincerely_Sierra
Summary: Gwendolyn notices Mildred’s mental health is regressing. Of course, she only notices when she finds Mildred having a breakdown with baby Alice one morning.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Series: Alice [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061582
Comments: 11
Kudos: 57





	You’ll be Okay

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for all the love and support I received on my previous (my first) Ratched fic! You asked for it, you got it! You all seemed to have fallen in love with baby Alice, so I’ve created a series of her for you. I know I haven’t gotten around to all the comments yet, but just know I’ve read them and am overwhelmed by how much you enjoyed it. 
> 
> —Sincerely, Sierra

They were still lingering in the seaside motel, but this time around, everything looked much different. Mildred was swaying about the small open area with a newborn tucked lovingly against her left shoulder while Gwendolyn simmered a pot of tomato soup on the stove. Mildred was not a fanatic over tomato soup in the slightest, but she had grown to enjoy it because, unfortunately, Betsy had a nasty habit of delivering only canned soup and a pack of bologna paired with a loaf of bread to their door every Monday evening after her shift as head nurse of Lucia State Hospital.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Gwendolyn announced quietly, avoiding upsetting the babe on Mildred’s shoulder who had only just recently drifted off. “It’s tomato soup again, darling. I can make a run to the general store down the road. We’re almost out of Karo. We’ll have enough for a couple more batches of formula but no more than that. I think little one is going through a growth spurt. She’s been feeding more frequently.” 

“No,” Mildred said almost all too quickly. She cleared her throat and swayed a bit more, her eyes averting Gwendolyn’s raised brows. “It’s fine. I’ve gotten used to it. I can always make a bologna sandwich, too. And as for the Karo, I’ll have Betsy deliver some on her way home. She doesn’t mind. She adores Alice.”

Chuckling to herself, Gwendolyn turned the heat down on the stove and brushed a kiss to Mildred’s forehead, then to Alice’s. The baby was only a day past a month old and had the darkest, fullest head of hair imaginable. Mildred’s new favorite pastime was wetting her fingers and using them to create amusing hairstyles on Alice’s head, which Gwendolyn found to be quite precious. 

Tonight’s wicked hairstyle was a baby mohawk. It was spiky and improper in all the right ways, sticking up here and there and flatter in other places as Mildred’s saliva dried. It tousled as Alice moved her head to find comfort in the crook of Mildred’s neck, a gesture so small yet so important to Mildred. The baby found solace in her because she needed her to thrive, and that was somehow the most prized joy in Mildred’s life at the moment. 

Gwendolyn and Mildred had settled into a rhythm of taking turns holding Alice during mealtimes. Sometimes, Alice would sleep the entire way through a meal, but more than often she would fuss at the first sensation of being put down and would only soothe if one of her mothers was holding her. To avoid the upset altogether, the couple switched off each meal, this time being Gwendolyn’s turn to eat one-handed with an infant smushed into her chest. 

After Gwendolyn poured an even amount of soup into two bowls and set them down on the small table with a plate of crackers, Mildred handed sleeping Alice off and watched as Gwendolyn switched her to her left arm in order to eat with her right hand. They sat together, as they did each morning, afternoon, and night, and Mildred sighed softly as she absentmindedly stirred the soup. Gwendolyn’s eyes met hers for a moment before Mildred finally decided to speak. 

“I’m thinking of returning to Lucia State Hospital,” Mildred quietly announced to her girlfriend. “Even if it’s just for a little while. We need to get back on our feet and get out of here. If we intend on raising Alice properly, we need to be wiser about our life choices. She’s eventually going to grow out of the dresser drawers.”

Despite understanding where Mildred was coming from, especially about Alice growing out of the makeshift and somewhat unsafe bed they had made, Gwendolyn was uneasy about Mildred returning to the hospital as a nurse for crazed patients. Although Mildred maintained a perfect disposition for the job, Gwendolyn was hesitant to nod in agreement, considering the baby and how their life had been flipped upside down in the last few weeks and now was not the time to jump into something as large as the workforce when there was a newborn child involved. 

“We’ll have to think more about it, but what about Alice? Someone has to watch her while we work,” Gwendolyn reasoned as she bit into a cracker. “Unless one of us works and the other becomes a stay-at-home mother. Like those nuclear families you hate so much.”

Mildred’s scowl drove Gwendolyn’s point home. The brunette’s hatred for the typical man and woman raising one boy and one girl and nothing else precisely was still strong after all these years, and it was much more prevalent than ever this day and age, with the women being forced out of the workforce and back into the homes to bear and raise children while simultaneously keeping a clean house and cooking for their husbands each evening as if they had not been kicking toys around and self-medicating with an entire bottle of scotch behind their husbands’ backs all day.

“We aren’t a nuclear family,” insisted Mildred. “Even being two parents, we still are not considered nuclear because we are two unmarried women. I cannot fathom becoming nuclear. I’m a working woman, Gwen. I’m used to being at someone’s service, treating patients, administering medication. I cannot be a sitting duck all day while I mule over a baby, although I love her very, very much. I’ve just never been one to sit around. I have to be out there, doing something.” 

Gwendolyn looked down at Alice, who was resting happily against her mother’s chest. Her tiny eyelashes fluttered sweetly in her slumber,and Gwendolyn, relatively unemployed and having one single hobby; baking, understood that, if Mildred’s plausible decision to return to the hospital as a full-time nurse for the ill and the chronically and criminally insane, she would become the stay-at-home mother she never once dreamed of becoming. Her entry to politics years ago stemmed from a little girl’s dream of being someone, although she felt a step behind the men who had attempted to abuse her, and she made that dream come true, but once Wilburn’s hasty termination of her employment shamed her into oblivion, Gwendolyn’s dreams folded. 

“We’ll decide later,” Gwendolyn insisted. “Right now, I just want to enjoy dinner with you and get Alice fed and changed for the night.” 

Mildred thanked her with a smile. Discussing the new society as it was and the lack of women in the workforce was much too exhausting for Mildred, and Gwendolyn understood that exhaustion well enough to leave the subject alone while Mildred was attempting to enjoy a decent meal. 

Gwendolyn finished dinner first. She always finished dinner first. In fact, she always finished every meal first. Mildred, on the other hand, enjoyed to pick at her food and stare at for awhile it as if it were growing a head. Her eating habits had always been terrible, and Gwendolyn had tried, on numerous occasions, to correct those habits by offering Mildred more nutritionally-dense foods, like natural meats and fresh vegetables, to no avail. Feeding Mildred was more difficult than feeding Alice was, and the one of the two who would spit up during meals was still favorable for Gwendolyn. 

“It’s not going to jump out at you, you know,” said Gwendolyn as she placed her bowl in the sink and rinsed it, Alice against her shoulder. Her voice became serious and hardened, but not hard enough to frighten Mildred. “Millie, you need to eat.”

Stirring the cold soup with her spoon, Mildred scowled at it as if it had killed her pet. Understanding Mildred was slipping into the throes of her mind again, Gwendolyn relinquished Alice to the open dresser drawer, ensuring she would not awaken, and made her way back to the woman sitting at the table. The strawberry blonde woman knelt next to her lover and placed a gentle hand on her back. Mildred jumped a bit but relaxed as she found Gwendolyn staring at her. 

“It’s all right, Mildred,” Gwendolyn assured quietly. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m fine,” said Mildred, even as she allowed the watery soup to slide off her spoon with a small splash. “Just a bit tired. I can’t tell you how little sleep I got last night. Alice was fussing nonstop.” 

Gwendolyn kissed Mildred’s temple in a way that reminded the latter that she would be just fine somehow, some way. And Gwendolyn understood, too, that Mildred was regressing and needed not to be touched, rather to ride this out as smoothly as she could so she would not become overstimulated by touch. So the taller woman left Mildred at the table and returned to a fussy baby, scooping her up and pressing her against her shoulder as she carried her to the kitchenette to prepare a bottle. 

One handed, Gwendolyn removed the pitcher of prepared formula from the refrigerator and poured a few ounces into one of their very few bottles. She allowed the glass to sit below a stream of hot water for a minute or so before testing it and offering the lukewarm milk to Alice, who initially rejected the latex touching her lips. 

As she continued to toy with her soup, Mildred watched Gwendolyn coax the bottle into the baby’s mouth, silencing the whining that gave Mildred a growing headache. Gwendolyn lowered herself into a chair and quietly fed Alice while Mildred attempted to feed herself with slow motions. After the third bite, Mildred’s digestive tract began to refuse whatever she was in taking, and she stopped, her belly jittering. She placed a nearly full bowl into the sink next to Gwendolyn’s empty one and rinsed them out with a steady stream of water. 

“She’s still hungry,” Gwendolyn observed as Alice polished off the bottle and continued to vigorously suckle on the empty nipple, becoming disgruntled when realizing there was nothing left but air. “How are you still hungry, sweetheart? You’ve eaten like a horse all day!”

Mildred chuckled and poured another ounce of formula into the final clean bottle they had available. She ran it under hot water, tested it, and opened her arms to Gwendolyn, who easily passed the babe over to her, sighing as she went over to the sink to wash the dishes. 

Watching what would have been her wife if it were not for society and their hydrotherapy, Mildred fed Alice the last ounce of formula and subsequently lifted her to her shoulder to elicit a burp from the baby. It came easily and quickly, and Mildred felt the cloth beneath the cotton shirt Alice wore. 

“You need a change,” Mildred observed, snatching a clean diaper from the makeshift clothesline in the bathroom—they were using the towel rack to dry the handful of cloth diapers they had. 

As Gwendolyn finished tidying up the kitchen area and set the dishes and bottles out to dry, Mildred quickly changed Alice’s wet diaper, a skill she had been forced to master over the past few weeks. It seemed as though Mildred never stopped washing soiled diapers and holding her breath as she disposed of the old and replaced it with the new. 

“All better,” said Mildred as she picked Alice up and left gentle kisses along her head. “Tomorrow is bath day for you.”

Gwendolyn leaned against the wall and watched on, enamored by how smoothly Mildred had taken to having a newborn. The conditions were not exactly ideal nor what either of them had imagined for themselves or for a child—if they had imagined a child at all—, but Mildred found a way somehow. She had managed to accept their living situation as it was and make the best of what she could in the moment; like the towel rack and the dresser drawer. It wasn’t that they could not afford a proper sleeping arrangement, more so than they did not want to become too comfortable and homey in the motel. 

“She’s so small,” murmured Mildred. “Yet she has such a large appetite.” 

“Growth spurt,” said Gwendolyn. “Someday she’ll be walking and talking. And then, we’re really in trouble.”

Mildred chuckled and curled up with the baby on the bed, and Gwendolyn watched even longer, finding herself engrossed with the anomaly that was Mildred Ratched and their tinier anomaly they called Alice Ratched-Briggs. 

—

The following day brought forth a problem. It was three days before a Monday and Gwendolyn discovered the Karo bottle empty and sticky in the cupboard. She tried scraping together whatever she could from the sides and bottom using a knife, but she could only produce one whole tablespoon, a tablespoon short for the formula. 

Of course, someone such as Gwendolyn did not think missing one tablespoon of something so sugary was detrimental to a baby, but she knew Mildred well enough to not go through that discussion again, because Mildred carried the formula recipe in her pocket. 

It was seven that morning, and Mildred’s alarm was due to sound off any moment. There was enough formula for Alice’s first bottle of the day, but nothing more than that, and that meant Gwendolyn had to time a perfectly executed shopping trip to the general store around Alice’s wicked feeding schedule and growth spurt. She decided she would leave as soon as Mildred fed the baby around seven-thirty. 

Breakfast was hot cereal and bananas. Again. But Gwendolyn knew Mildred would not mind, because Mildred did not like to eat anything that was not extruded from an animal or something not in the form of a peach. Nevertheless, Gwendolyn was determined to coax food into Mildred’s mouth, whether that was by force or by gentle convincing. 

As anticipated, Mildred’s alarm sounded off, and one hand slipped from the covers and slammed onto the clock, silencing the damned thing once and for all before it could wake the slumbering infant. Gwendolyn set the table and waited patiently for Mildred to heave herself out of bed. Soon, Mildred was out of bed and tugging on a pair of slippers, and she gave Gwendolyn a morning kiss despite not being the freshest. Gwendolyn never minded.

“Hot cereal?” Mildred asked. “I could make myself—“

“No bologna. You need something that won’t upset your stomach so early in the morning, darling,” Gwendolyn insisted as she sat Mildred down at the table. She kissed the top of Mildred’s head. “Baby’s bottle is ready, but we’re out of Karo. I’m going to get dressed and go to the general store to pick some up. It wouldn’t hurt to get a few more cans of milk, too. I’ll only be awhile, not too long. They open at eight. I’d better hurry.” 

Mildred prepared to protest, but Gwendolyn was already rushing about to find a proper outfit for this morning’s short lived outing. The brunette woman sat rigidly in her seat, hovering above the steaming bowl of hot cereal as she stared into the pale abyss of mush. She took a cautious bite of the cereal and found that opening her jaw caused her tears to push back behind her eyeballs again.

Already outfitted, Gwendolyn had her teeth brushed and hair combed by the time Alice awakened in her makeshift bed. She hurried to the dresser and scooped the baby up, shushing her lightly and leaving kisses on her face before she could upset any further than her tiny whimpers. Gwendolyn removed a cloth diaper from the rack and settled Alice on the bed over a towel, beginning to change the wet diaper. She held the pins between her teeth as she did her best to work around the baby’s squirming. 

“It’s alright, darling,” Gwendolyn cooed as she pinned the fresh diaper. “You’re all clean now. You must be so hungry. How about some breakfast?” 

Mildred stared at her bowl. The hot cereal was becoming cold cereal rather quickly. Gwendolyn brought Alice over to the table and sat with Mildred, frowning as she watched the woman gaze longingly into her breakfast as though she was waiting for something magical to happen. Gwendolyn reached for the bottle of formula but was quickly halted by Mildred’s shaky hand. 

“I can feed her,” Mildred insisted. “You’ve already changed her. I can do it.”

“You need to eat,” Gwendolyn responded, taking the bottle from Mildred. 

“So do you,” retorted the nurse. 

“I’m not all that hungry.” Gwendolyn threw a terrycloth burp rag over her shoulder, tipped the baby back a bit, and began feeding her. 

“Neither am I.”

Gwendolyn did not argue with that sentiment, and simply watched as the formula disappeared from the bottle Alice was ravenously drinking from. The woman fondly kissed Alice’s head and admired her as she suckled gratefully and gazed up at her mother with those eyes that told Gwendolyn that she was content like this. 

After a quick burping which resulted in spit up, Gwendolyn kissed Alice again and placed her in Mildred’s arms, also giving her a soft kiss on her lips. Mildred relished in it for a moment, even as Gwendolyn pulled away and placed her hat on her head. 

“I’ll be back soon,” Gwendolyn assured. 

“Gwen. . .” Mildred quietly trailed off, rubbing Alice’s back. Gwendolyn’s brows furrowed. “Look to your left.”

A laugh bubbled from Gwendolyn’s throat as she tossed the burp cloth off her shoulder and blew Mildred a kiss before leaving the room. 

Mildred’s chest tightened. She lifted the baby up so they were eye to eye, although Alice wasn’t able to fully concentrate just yet, and kissed her button nose before settling her on her shoulder. 

“She’ll come back, sweetheart,” Mildred assured the infant, ever so balm and quiet. “She always does.”

That reassurance survived for approximately eleven minutes before Mildred heard a thump outside the motel room. Quickly, with Alice tucked in one arm, Mildred locked the door and looked through the peephole, not finding anything out of the ordinary or anything that would warrant her screaming out the window for help. At least, not then.

“It’s okay, darling,” Mildred breathed into Alice’s hair. “It’s okay. She’s coming back. She’s coming back.” 

The baby did not need the reassurance that Mildred thrived on. She was simply a newborn, who cared for nothing besides her milk and mothers’ warmth. Mildred envied the child, because she was warm and fed and had no comprehensive understanding of the world. She had no understanding of the horrors that had happened to Mildred, no recollection of Mildred screaming in agony as she was beaten mercilessly each day. 

Innocence. That was the word Mildred had been searching for. She was not too keen on it, but she remembered reading it in the large library the last family—the one who had broken both her and Edmund—had available for them. 

Mildred sat with Alice at the table, clutching the baby tightly to her breast as she rocked back and forth like weeds in the wind. It soothed Alice into a cat nap and Mildred into another world as she felt herself regress. It had been far too long—twenty-four minutes, to be exact. Gwendolyn was not coming back. And Mildred began to sob.

—

Gwendolyn had been gone for three minutes under an hour. Mildred knew she, yet again, had been abandoned, this time with another abandoned soul, who was much tinier than Mildred had been the first time, to accompany her. 

The mechanics of the locks clicked and twisted, and Mildred’s tears flowed faster as she snuggled Alice closer, trying to keep her as warm as possible on the cold floor. She held in a sob as the door opened and closed, and she flinched at the sound of something hitting the floor followed by footsteps. The only reason Alice was calm was the pacifier she was happily suckling, and Mildred wanted to rip it away from her to pacify her own cries that could get her killed or beaten if the intruder discovered her only hiding place. 

“Mildred?” The melodic voice sounded a lot like Gwendolyn, but Mildred did not trust it. Voices lied. They deceived. They only wanted her to reveal herself so they could hurt her child or both of them. “Mildred? Sweetheart? Where are you?”

Tears stung Mildred’s eyes as she rocked harder. Alice began to whimper, the pacifier leaving her mouth as she did so. Quickly, Mildred attempted to replace it to silence the growing cries, to no avail. Alice was crying and so was Mildred and the world was crumbling beneath them both, sucking Mildred into a void. Gwendolyn was gone and there was nothing Mildred could possibly do about it other than cry and yell and—

“Mildred!” Gwendolyn’s voice cried as the closet door swung open. 

Mildred could not stop the scream that erupted from her mouth. The newborn crushed against her chest wailed in response, and suddenly two warm, soft hands were grasping Mildred’s face. Those hands stroked and caressed loving and soothingly, but Mildred did not dare open her eyes. Not yet. She was not ready. 

“Mildred. Come on, darling. Open your eyes. Open your eyes. Please, Millie.” 

Mildred’s eyes forced themselves open, and there was Gwendolyn, on her knees, cradling her face. Gwendolyn seemed grief-stricken and terrified, even more so as Alice wailed and mewled and would not stop until her mother picked her up from Mildred’s arms and held her against her shoulder as she wrapped Mildred in her free arm. The baby self-soothed, drifting off with Gwendolyn’s heat, and quieted down with ease. 

“Gwendolyn?” Mildred whimpered. “I—I thought—“

“You thought I wasn’t coming back,” Gwendolyn finished, holding her lover impossibly closer. “I know, honey. I know. Come on. Let’s get you out of here.” 

“No. I heard something,” Mildred rasped. She tried catching her breath. “I heard someone. Not you—before then—I think—I. . .”

“Shh, shh,” Gwendolyn cooed as she pressed a kiss to Mildred’s damp forehead. “I know, darling. It’s okay. Nobody is going to hurt you.” 

“There’s someone here,” Mildred whimpered. “I heard them.” 

“That was me, sweetheart. I just got here,” Gwendolyn assured. “But, if it makes you feel any better, I can check. Stay right here, okay?”

It wasn’t as if Mildred had any choice in that matter, as she was frozen in terror. Gwendolyn stood up, still holding her baby, and scoped the entire room top to bottom, inside every cupboard and drawer, and under the bed where Mildred liked to hide during these attacks. As anticipated, she found nothing there, and returned to Mildred with a soft smile on her lips and a baby dozing on her shoulder. 

“No one is here, sweet pea,” cooed Gwendolyn. “Come on out. It’s very dusty in this closet.” 

Almost laughably, Mildred crawled out of the closet. She was still dressed in her nightclothes with her hair a wild disarray around her salty, bare face, and she collapsed into Gwendolyn, sobs overcoming her body once again. Keeping a steady grasp on the woman and the newborn, Gwendolyn brought them to the bed and held one vulnerable being in each arm, alternating between them to give them small kisses. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mildred pleaded into her lover’s chest, which was received with a gentle shushing and a kiss. 

Mildred was crying in Gwendolyn’s left arm and Alice was was whimpering in her right. She looked between the two and did not know what to do in that moment. She knew Alice needed a change and Mildred needed to be consoled, and dear god, how difficult this was for them. 

Alice’s diaper could wait until Mildred was calm, Gwendolyn decided. She stroked Mildred’s hair and left kisses along her hairline, urging her to soothe herself, but Mildred’s cries persisted and her body began rocking back and forth, bringing both Gwendolyn and Alice with her. 

“I’m sorry, I scared her. I scared her,” Mildred blubbered. “I didn’t mean to.”

“She’s just fine,” assured Gwendolyn. “She just needs a change, but that can wait until you’ve calmed down. I’m not letting you go until you’re calm, sweetheart.”

Although she could not express herself without hurling or bursting a lung, Mildred grasped onto Gwendolyn for dear life, nestling her face in the crook of her neck the same way Alice had. Gwendolyn sighed in content as her hand tousled in Mildred’s hair and gently scratched her scalp. 

Alice needed to be taken care of, so Mildred found it in herself to simmer her cries down to mere hiccups. Her baby needed a changing and they needed to make more formula; now was not the appropriate time for Mildred to have a meltdown, not when her child needed something and Gwendolyn was torn between taking care of the baby or her. 

“There,” Gwendolyn sighed in relief. “Everything is okay, darling. You’re okay. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Mildred sniffled. 

“Don’t be sorry,” replied Gwendolyn. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“You were gone for awhile. I thought you had left me. And then I—I heard something. So I locked the door, but I was still so scared. I thought someone was already here,” Mildred whimpered. “Alice was being fussy, and I didn’t want them to hurt her, so I hid in the closet with her and stayed there until you came home. But I didn’t know it was you. I thought—I thought it was—“

Mildred began to cry again, and Gwendolyn allowed her to do so this time, holding her close until she felt as if she were fading away and Mildred’s cries were echoing. 

Gwendolyn had always known, from the moment they had moved to Mexico for those few years, that this would be a constant in their life; the nightmares, the disordered eating, the panic attacks, the hiding. It was all very normal in their lives, and perhaps it shouldn’t have been, but it was. Gwendolyn could identify the onset of an anxiety attack and was able to pacify them before Mildred could fall into survival mode, especially in the public eye where the kissing and touching were not options. 

“Darling,” Gwendolyn addressed, using her finger to lift Mildred’s chin. “Can I ask you something? Are you okay with that?”

Mildred nodded, although quite apprehensive. “Of course.”

“You said that you thought I wasn’t coming home, but you also said you hid in the closet until I came home,” Gwendolyn recalled. “Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you must know that I’m coming back when I leave. How do you feel when I leave?”

There was a large pause, and Mildred sniffled and leaned against her girlfriend. “When you leave, I always think you aren’t coming back. But sometimes, I have to tell myself that you will come back. Most of me believes you’re gone forever, but some of me knows you’ll be back. It’s like they’re constantly arguing with each other over who’s right and who’s wrong.”

Settling Alice’s head in the crook of her elbow so she was cradling her, Gwendolyn kissed Mildred’s forehead and wiped her tears with her thumb. 

“I can assure you, I will always come home to you,” Gwendolyn whispered. “Always. I have so much love for you and Alice. I could never abandon you, darling.”

Mildred sobbed in relief. Gwendolyn held the both of them to herself, rocking them side to side. Alice was contently sucking on her pacifier and Mildred, well, she was clinging to Gwendolyn as if she were drowning and Gwendolyn was her life preserver. It was just a tad embarrassing for Mildred, but she understood that Gwendolyn would never shame or beat her for her incessant rocking or food regression like her foster parents did. 

“Now, I’m going to change the baby, make formula, and put Alice down for a nap. And then we can snuggle up in bed and listen to the radio,” Gwendolyn proposed. “How does that sound?”

Heavenly. It sounded heavenly. But Mildred settled for a small nod. 

And Gwendolyn did just as she said; she changed Alice’s soiled diaper, boiled a batch of formula with the Karo and milk and poured it in the pitcher, and laid the baby down in her drawer for a nap. Mildred had been in her nightclothes all morning, which was fine by Gwendolyn, who changed into hers and climbed into bed with Mildred. 

“You didn’t touch your breakfast,” Gwendolyn observed as she wrapped an arm around Mildred. Mildred flinched. “Hey. It’s all right. We’ll try again at lunch in a few hours, okay?”

“Could I just have a bologna sandwich?” Mildred asked, and how could Gwendolyn say no to that face? 

“Of course you can,” Gwendolyn chuckled. 

Mildred’s eyes drooped beyond their strength, and she found herself drifting away as Gwendolyn stroked her ear and rubbed her back. It was at that moment that Gwendolyn had to make a choice. Perhaps she would not mind becoming a stay-at-home mother like the nuclear families, if it meant Mildred wasn’t huddled in a closet with the baby all day. Coming home to Mildred was supposed to be the most glorious sensation in the world, but Gwendolyn did not want Mildred to suffer to have that sensation. At least, not until Mildred felt well enough to do so. 

For the humor of it, Gwendolyn made a point to have Betsy drop off a frilly apron on Monday. After all, if they were going to be nuclear, they had to act the part. And boy, was Gwendolyn going to have as much fun as she could.


End file.
